Day one in madrid

The travel was miserable. Much worse than i had anticipated. From leaving boise, and including al of the lay overs and delays, it took me twenty-eight hours to finally arrive in madrid. I learned a few things, the french really are assholes. eleven hours in a plane is equivalent to be putting in the hole. And jet lag is not a myth. But, i have arrived and it is amazing here.

tonight i got lost. that is all i wanted to do. Many of the other USAC students chose to go out drinking tonight. i had to pass. at dinner one student was talking about how spanish people are deuches, and needed to get their asses kicked. yeah, i don't get why he's here either. a few others talked about how dirt the city was, which i'll get too...instead i just wandered around seeing how much only a square mile (which was only investigated on the surface) has to offer.

one cannot prepare for the grandure that is madrid. Every thing in the city is art. Well, everything in the part of town my hotel for tonight, is art. The buildings are all so old. Every detail of them is perfected. The doorways are art. the window wells are art. the statues that top the buildings, they too are art. The round abouts have gigantic foutains in the center of them. All the ministry buildings, similar to our "deartment of" buildings are in old palaces. they are magnificent buildings. I'm staying a few blocks from the meuseo de prado. the building is gorgeous. i don't know what the architecture is called, but it remingds me of the palace of versille. and, right behind the prado is a huge gothic chapel. the styles are just so vastly different. it's amazing. and, also, right behind the chapel, is a gigantic public park. it was locked by the time i found it, but i wil discover it's beauty soon.

the city is so amazingly clean. it crazy. again, i'm staying in one of the most relevant areas so i can't speak for the whole city, but the streets are so clean. the sidewalks, which are created out of granite tile, not concrete slabs, are spotless. the building do look dirty. but they are so old. centuries of weather and damage to them. so yeah, some of the buildings do look like they have dirt on them, but touch them and they sure don't. everywhere in america i'd find cigarette butts, their euqivalent places in spain do not.
i took one turn off a major blvd, and i was on a stereotypical cramped european street. their wideths were barely wide enough for a passing car. the parked cars were pulled onto the sidewalk to make space. the streets themselves were coblestone, and were definitely not set up on a grid system. intersecting roads crossed at random and unpredictable angles. large buildings, some apts, some offices, some resrautns with offices and apts on the top levels, lined the roads. and every single window had a terrace. infact, nearly all apts i've seen in spain have terraces. oh man, i hope my apt has a terrace. i'll find out tomorrow.

the people here seem to be great. and yes, the spanish are beautiful people. my lord are they. i was sitting in front of the prado smoking, and a madrid native named alexendro asked me for a smoke, and then sat down and we talked. He didn't speak english well. i don't speak spanish well. but he still sat down and got my basic story. he told me he was going to grenada, which is three hours away, tomorrow.

this is only the surface of what mardid has to offer me. day one was amazing, and there is so much left of the city to discover. oh, and not to mention the people i am bound to met.

jake.